Derivation of the Screening of Nutritional Risk in Intensive Care (SCREENIC) risk prediction score: A secondary analysis of a prospective cohort study

Background: For patients who are critically ill, the recommended nutrition risk screening tools are the Nutrition Risk in the Critically Ill (NUTRIC) and the Nutritional Risk Screening 2002 (NRS-2002) have limitations.Objective: To develop a new screening tool, the Screening of Nutritional Risk in Intensive Care (SCREENIC score), and assess its predictive validity.Methods: A secondary analysis of a prospective cohort study was conducted. Variables from several nutritional screening and assessment tools were considered. The high nutrition risk cutoff point was defined using mNUTRIC as a reference. Predictive validity was evaluated using logistic regression and Cox regression.Results: The study included 450 patients (64 [54-71] years, 52.2% men). The SCREENIC score comprised six questions: (1) does the patient have >= 2 comorbidities (1.3 points); (2) was the patient hospitalized for >= 2 days before intensive care unit (ICU) admission (0.9 points); (3) does the patient have sepsis (1.0 point); (4) was the patient on mechanical ventilation upon ICU admission (1.2 points); (5) is the patient aged >65 years (1.2 points); and (6) does the patient exhibit signs of moderate/severe muscle mass loss according to the physical exam (0.6 points). The high nutrition risk cutoff point was set at 4.0. SCREENIC demonstrated moderate agreement (kappa = 0.564) and high accuracy (0.896 [95% CI, 0.867-0.925]) with mNUTRIC. It predicted prolonged ICU (odds ratio [OR] = 1.81 [95% CI, 1.14-2.85]) and hospital stay (OR = 2.15 [95% CI, 1.37-3.38]).Conclusion: The SCREENIC score comprises questions with variables that do not require nutrition history. Further evaluation of its applicability, reproducibility, and validity in guiding nutrition therapy is needed using large external cohorts.